The Chinese Assassin (11 page)

4

‘Do you think Yang himself is
the
survivor?’ Nina
turned
on her side as she spoke and
raised
herself up on her elbow, The single sheet covering her
slipped,
revealing her naked shoulders
and
breasts. She looked quickly at Scholefield, but be
was
oblivious. Dressed only in a
bathrobe,
he
was
sitting on
the
edge of
the bed with
his back to her,
staring
at
the pink
folios he’d propped up on the tea-tray
between
the milk jug
and
the sugar
bas
in
.

‘That looks
like
the inference we’re supposed to draw.’ He spoke over his shoulder
and wiped
the back of his hand
across his
damp forehead.

‘Couldn’t it be true?’

‘It’s
just
too
damned sensational
for words.’ He
began
leaf
in
g
through
the
pink
sheets again
and
Nina reluctantly covered herself: Although it was only
nine
o’clock in the morning the temperature in the room
was
already in
the
upper
seventies.
Outside the Open window the low
sky
glowed
with
a
dull
metallic incandescence as if some great
burnished tureen
cover
had been
clamped over London to keep the
breathless
heat trapped
close
to
the
ground. A stale, dry,
sauna-cabin
smell of scorched wood hung in the air outside.

‘He
did limp
badly,
didn’t
he?’

Scholefield nodded
without
turning his head. ‘Yes—and I
don’t
believe that
cock
and bull tale
about
being a bent
PLA
acupuncture student.’

‘It
didn’t ring true
to me either. He doesn’t
seem the type.
But why such an elaborate cover story?’

‘I think for some
reason
I
was
meant
to see
through
it. It could have
been a signal
to look for
something
more profound.’

Nina
smiled. ‘Like the folios in the chocolate box?’

Scholefield
stared
at the
pink
sheets of paper without seeing them.

‘China
is well
known
for
its sexual puritanism—but
homosexuality is not a capital offence. It’s frowned on, of course,
politically like
rape
and
promiscuity.
They say
it smacks of
“counter-revolutionary”
behaviour from
the
old, pre-liberation
days—but
I’ve never heard of it
being punished
by
death.’

Nina
moved towards him
and tangled
her
fingers
gently in
the
hair at
the
na
pe
of his neck. The sheet fell away again as she
leaned closer
to whisper in his ear.
‘Demonstrate
a bit of counterrevolutionary
behaviour
for me
right
now, could you, sweetheart?’

He
ignored her and poured himself another cup
of tea,
‘What’s
more, the
Party’s recommended
marrying ages in
China are
28 for
men. and
2
6
for women—not 35. If he
knows as much as
he
claims to
about me,
our devious
Comrade
Yang
would know I
should
spot that sort of
deliberate mistake
pretty quickly.’

Nina
struck her forehead loudly
with the palm
of
her
hand
and fell
back on the
pillows.
.‘.Eur
e
ka! Of
course,
Holmes! This
F
u
Man-chu’s an
impostor!
Why
didn’t I see
that
before?’ When she
stopped giggling and ope
ne
d
her eyes he
was
sipping his
tea thoughtfully and staring serious-f
a
ced
at
the
folios again. She
sighed
loudly,
pulled
the sheet
right up over her head and
held it
there,
lying rigid, without breathing, in
the
attitude of a corpse.

Scholefield continued reading
and
only the
dull hum
of traffic noise
from outside
broke
the
hot silence
in
the room. Suddenly
Nina took
a deep breath
and
arched her back, pressing herself up against the
tight-drawn
sheet
until her
nipples
stood
out
like buttons.
Her voice
came through
the
sheet petulant and muffled.
‘If only you were half as
good
a Nina—watcher as you
are
a
China-watcher—’

Scho
l
e
field
turned
slowly
towards her.
He gazed
distractedly
at the contours of her body for a moment, then laughed despite
h
imself He snatched the sheet from her fingers, peeled
it
back and flung
it
aside.

‘If only I was, then what?’

She pouted at him, still holding the posture. ‘You’d know how self-sacrificial I’d been, coming back here last night and finding you in a jet-lagged coma. Then pretending not to notice when you got up every couple of hours through the night to sneak off and read those damned folios in the kitchen.’

He stood up abruptly, unknotting the belt of his bathrobe. She collapsed with a little scream of mock horror as he took
it
off and walked purposefully round to her side of the bed. He stopped and stood smiling down at her. ‘This heat doesn’t affect your
Iri
sh
-
Italian nymphomania at all, then?’

She touched his nearest knee with the first two fingers of her right hand and watched them walk slowly up his bare thigh. ‘
I
t makes me worse—especially after ten-day symposia on Peking’s military strength in Ottawa.’ She gazed up hot-eyed into his face. ‘My intuitive guess is that maybe China and me have something in common—perhaps we both want something from you.’

He bent over her and the tips of their tongues met between her teeth. They tantalised each other slowly with their mouths and hands until passion finally engulfed them
an
d swept them’ both into a long and tender frenzy. Afterwards they lay clenched together for a long time with their eyes closed, their minds filled only with the blind sensations of their bodies.

‘Christ almighty, sweetheart, you know I really begin to suspect
I’
m
only a year or two away from falling in love with you.’

He breathed deeply and pulled back from her, touching the damp hair on her forehead wonderingly ‘with his fingertips.

She shook her head in a little motion of disbelief. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. When she spoke her voice betrayed more than a hint of her original Irish brogue. ‘I’m not entirely indifferent to you either.’ She traced a slow pattern in the perspiration on his back with one finger. ‘Could
it
be, do you think, because you’re such a beautiful indifferent bastard most of the time? In combination with that devastating academic mind of yours, of course.’

He
smiled. ‘Maybe that has got something to do with it.’

The traffic
hum from
outside
was growing into a dull roar wi
t
h the advancing day. They lay contentedly side by side, Nina with her eyes closed, Scholefield staring
at the ceiling,
drifting into
their separate thoughts. For a long time neither of them spoke.

When she opened her eyes she
saw
his brow was again furrowed in a frown. She raised herself to look into his face. ‘What’s so important about how Lin Piao died, Richard? If it happened in 1971 isn’t it all rather old hat now?’

‘
I
n one way it is. But
still
it happens to be one of the greatest unsolved political
mysteries
of
our times. And if the
folios are genuine and he
was
murdered as
they
suggest
and
those responsible are now plotting to assassinate Mao, there might be
the odd
crank in Washington
and
Moscow, not to mention Peking
itself,
who’d be interested in the details.’

She punched him quickly on
the
solar
plexus with a small fist and
he jack-knifed into a sitting position, clutching at her wrist. ‘Don’t be so bloody
sarcastic.
The arcane
doings
of
8oo
million
Chinese
may be child’s play to you
and
your clever
friends—.

He grinned
and
dropped her wrist. ‘Wrong. If you laid all
the
Sinologists in the world
end
to end
they still
wouldn’t reach a conclusion.’

‘Why
not?’

‘Because they just
don’t know
any
more
than
you do about what really happened to
Comrade Lin.’

‘What do the
Chinese themselves say
happened to him?’

‘For ten months after the Trident
crash
there
was a deafening
silence out of Peking.
Then
suddenly
the
following
July they
started to gush out statements
saying
he had, after all, died in the crash in Mongolia with his
wife
and
son and
a few hangers-on when the Trident ran out of fuel. Trying to defect to the Soviet Union,
he
was, they say, after three bungled attempts to do away
with
Mao and
take
over as
the great sun in all their Chinese hearts.
And they’ve
stuck
to that
colourful
story ever since, through thick and thin.’

She hugged her knees in front of
her
chest
and
rested her chin on them, smiling wickedly at him. ‘And why do all you smug Sinologists lying end to end
think
they shouldn’t?’